


I could do a back flip fade away, and still watch the ball swish

by waferkya



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Basketball, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 05:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the summer of 2009, Real Madrid gets two important signings: defender Alvaro Arbeloa, fresh out of Liverpool FC, coming back to his childhood team; and Raúl Albiol, big, goofy shooting guard from Valencia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I could do a back flip fade away, and still watch the ball swish

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of days ago [this photo of Chori and Alvaro](http://25.media.tumblr.com/2e2b244bbfd78ec1f4655d9dfdc55752/tumblr_ml0x1xna1E1qbpdiyo1_500.jpg) showed up on my dash, that's them holding the trophy of the basketball Copa del Rey, and I just. I _had_ to write this. That photo speaks to me on a subatomic level. And Chori would make a hell of a basketball player okay.

Raúl walks out of the infirmary rubbing at the big, blue-ish mark that sits on his arm right over the elbow, and in his head he goes over the doctor’s words again— _for the love of God, please stop bumping into things unless you want to turn purple all over_ ; and, fine, maybe that wasn’t a completely shitty piece of advice, but hey, it’s not like Raúl has been willingly throwing himself at furniture and his teammates and that lamppost the other day, okay?

He bruises easily, it’s not his fault. Besides, sometimes it even comes pretty handy on court—Raúl has found that refs will watch his opponents like hawks when his arms and shoulders are covered in ugly hurtful blotches.

So, yes, his skin maybe is a sorry sight, but there’s not much he can do about that. The doc totally needs a chamomile or two or twenty, not that Raúl is in any way qualified to diagnose anxiety issues.

He turns around a corner, still idly scratching his elbow because he kinda likes the soft sparkle of pain between his skin and bones, and walks right into a potted plant. Startled by the brush of fake leaves on his cheek, Raúl jumps to the side, hitting something harder and sharper than plastic branches; something that oofs loudly and tumbles towards the other hallway wall; something that, Raúl realizes as soon as he turns around, is definitely _someone_.

“Crap,” Raúl says, spinning on his pivot foot to catch the guy he just accidentally knocked off his feet. “I’m so, so sorry, I was just, trying to escape from the plant.”

The guy, who just barely kept his balance and is currently bent in half, hands on his knees, tips his head up and to the side, huffing a tiny laugh.

“Evil plants, huh. Is everything so dangerous around here?”

Raúl grins, bright and happy. “More or less, sorry.”

He offers a hand and the guy grabs it to get himself back upright; he sighs then, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck a little, and there’s something familiar about his face that makes Raúl pause and tip his head to the side.

“Do I know you?” he asks. “I think I know you.”

The guys has a slim face, a long, thin nose, and pretty olive skin—and apparently, a brilliant white smile that makes Raúl smile back immediately, for no reason whatsoever.

“Seriously?” the guy says, his eyes flicking down to the Real Madrid crest printed in gold on Raúl’s white t-shirt. He licks his lips. “I’m Alvaro Arbeloa. The new guy, not so new really, with the football team?”

Raúl goes wide-eyed in a matter of seconds. “ _Oh_ , yes, of course, football! The one where you kick the ball with your feet,” he says, grinning and grabbing Alvaro’s—they’re colleagues, that makes it okay to jump straight to first names right?—hand with both of his, shaking it vigorously. “I’m Raúl! Raúl Albiol, I’m new too.”

Alvaro giggles. “Yeah, I know who _you_ are. I actually read the newspapers.”

“You know me?” Raúl says, most surprised. “Wow! Thank you, I mean, you can obviously call me Chori then, if you want.”

Alvaro laughs again, and it’s not the kind of derisive thing a lot of people do because they think Raúl can’t tell he’s the butt of the joke, but rather something genuine and amused and very, very pretty, Raúl thinks.

“Chori, huh? Where does that come from?” he asks, poking Raúl’s side with his pointy elbow. Raúl grins; he’s been preparing for this for years.

He throws an arm around Alvaro’s shoulders and says, “Well, you know, it’s a long, long, _long_ story,” and he makes a meaningful gesture with his free hand, and Alvaro laughs, and they walk out of the infirmary still hooked together and Raúl feels this sweet warm sensation that he’s just made a friend.

 

Three days later, the number of unlabeled boxes littering the floor at Alvaro’s apartment has doubled, because, in his words: “Seriously Chori, you’ve been in Madrid for two weeks already, you can’t possibly still sleep at a hotel.”

“My room was bigger than your home,” Raúl points out, and then he’s sprawling himself across Alvaro’s couch like an overgrown puppy that belongs exactly there.

Alvaro throws a pillow at him, but smiles fondly, and he has a text from Xabi that says, _Should I call you Mrs. Albiol from now on then?_

 

It’s been three weeks since they moved in together and Alvaro feels pretty bad about himself, because he’s been meaning to catch up on some of last season’s games forever now, but he still hasn’t gotten to it.

If he’s being completely honest, he doesn’t really know—or care—that much about the Spanish domestic basketball league; he’s more of an NBA type of guy, he likes the dramatics and the bright colours and the giant arenas, plus he’s been living in England for the past two years, so is it really surprising that he has no fucking idea who Chori used to play with in Valencia? Alvaro doesn’t think so.

He does, however, find a chance to redeem himself pretty soon; Raúl got called up to the National Team training camp, his name on a list of maybe eighteen players when there’s actually only twelve spots on the team, and ten or eleven of them are not open for discussion, and Alvaro can do with watching that, it can’t be too bad. He’s a good friend, and he’s a good Spaniard, and Pau Gasol is on that team anyway.

So, he throws himself on the couch for the first friendly of the summer, a game they’re playing for shits and giggles— _preparation_ , right,—before the Eurobasket championship begins later in September. Spain is up against a bunch of very pale guys who look exactly like your token Russian mobster in any Hollywood movie ever—Alvaro catches the word _Lithuania_ and nods to himself, groping around the couch for the remote.

When he finds it, he turns up the volume and then the camera suddenly is zooming in on Raúl, who’s stretching on the side of the court and, judging from his silly grin, probably telling some questionable joke to the blushing bloke laying next to him.

The commentators are now rattling on about Raúl’s transfer to Real Madrid, how he’s going to have to fill in the shoes of no less than two shooting guards leaving the team, and whether or not Messina will use him as a point guard too, and all Alvaro can think is, _are these guys for real? Chori can’t walk in a straight line without tripping all over his own feet, how the fuck do they expect him to run a team?_

They play the national anthems, there’s cheering and a bit of whistling— _Basques, man_ —and then the teams huddle up one last time before an infographic blows up, taking up the entire screen to show the line-ups and look, apparently Chori is starting.

Alvaro grabs a handful of popcorn and shoves it down his own throat, listening at the commentators chirp with delight at, they say, “Scariolo’s bold, bold choice! Let’s see what Albiol will do with only a fortnight of training with this team to count on.”

On national duty, Raúl wears the seventeen, Alvaro learns; it doesn’t mean anything, obviously, because it looks like numbers are simply given out in progressive order and anyway, Alvaro is pretty sure Raúl has no idea of what number he wears, so. No reason to get all choked up and blushy like a schoolgirl, seriously.

“Calm down, idiot,” Alvaro tells himself, “and just pray that he doesn’t fuck up royally.”

He doesn’t.

The thing is, Raúl should not be goot at basketball. At all.

Basketball is the kind of sport that lives and breathes on details, a carefully contructed composition of movement and strategy unraveling lightning-fast within a tiny space and Raúl, on his best days, has half the attention span of a goldfish; basketball burns mental strength much more quickly than physical energy, and Raúl has an habit of apologizing to the inanimate objects he is constantly dropping.

Sure, he’s tall; he has the freakishly long arms and legs and fingers, the big hands and all the problems in the world when it comes to finding shoes and clothes that fit him rather than just awkwardly hanging from his lanky frame, just like every other Hall of Famer in the history of ever. But height and fitness can’t make you Good At Basketball any more than wearing the newest shiniest pair of Air Jordan will, so Raúl, with his gangly limbs and the patological clumsiness, should not be good at basketball. At all.

There’s no reason for him to be anything but rubbish at it.

Except that he’s brilliant—the _NBA Teams Go In Full Seagulls-From-Finding-Nemo Mode When It Comes To Me_ kind of brilliant, according to the commentators. The kind of brilliant that can get a team from the bottom of the table up to two Eurocup titles in three years. The kind of brilliant that has Florentino Pérez froth at the mouth and pay your weight in gold to take you to Madrid.

Raúl is _that_ brilliant.

The moment he steps on court, Raúl finds a form. It’s like his spine finally gets solid, and he gets the kind of murderous focus that could lit up a candle ten feet away. Raúl fills out, his knees a little bent and his shoulders rolled in, whether he’s counter-faking a feint or shooting the buzzer beater to win the game, he is at his sharpest when he’s on the maple floor.

It’s impressive. It’s mesmerising. It’s unbelievable.

Alvaro almost drops his popcorn.

Of course, he _supposed_ that Raúl must’ve had some shred of talent somewhere, he got signed by Real Madrid after all, but there’s a sound difference between what Alvaro had imagined and what’s unraveling in front of his eyes—the dribbling, the suffocating defense, the flawless shooting form, the assists, the speed—and that difference is more or less the size of the Moon.

“Jesus Christ,” Alvaro breathes, and he leans in on his elbows and stares at the screen in disbelief; it feels so _weird_ , and he seriously wants to call Raúl’s mother to ask if that’s actually Chori, _his Chori_ , or maybe his secret evil twin brother.

 

“So, what d’you think?” Raúl asks over the phone, and he must be grinning very hard because Alvaro can barely make out the words.

“Are you shitting me? I’m forever incapable of any coherent thought because of you, you ass,” he says, with a breathy laugh. “I mean, fuck, Chori, that was a great game. Fantastic. How are you not in the NBA, dude?”

“I’m okay with Madrid,” Raúl says, dismissive, and then, “D’you want me to go away, in America?”

Alvaro is laughing again. “Fuck no man, _never_. You gotta stay and bring so much glory to our club that those red-and-blue sons of witches will weep for a thousand years.”

Raúl giggles. “You shouldn’t talk like that. Juanqui will hear you.”

“Juanqui? Navarro? I’m so not afraid of him!”

“Well, you should be,” some other voice says. “I have two seven-foot bodyguards at my service.”

Alvaro bites his tongue for a second before asking in a whisper, “Was that—?”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Raúl whispers back. “I think he has superpowers. He says he doesn’t, but he totally does.”

Alvaro shakes his head with a nervous smile. “Well, anyway, I meant what I said, Chori. Seriously amazing, that’s how you were out there.” He runs his hand through his hair. “So, do you think there’s any tickets left for your guys’ game in Madrid?”

 

Alvaro says he’s going to miss the final because of traning, but actually he’s curled up on his couch an hour before tip-off, draining a giant jar of iced lemon tea as he frantically flicks through the channels trying not to get too stressed out.

When it’s over, and he’s screamed his throat raw and his heart is going a mile a second and he’s so, so wreckedly happy he doesn’t know what to do with himself, he almost, almost jumps right out of his skin when the Star Wars theme starts blasting from under the couch.

Alvaro dives istantly, grabs his phone from down there and he’s still lying flat on his stomach when he answers, without even checking the caller because who the fuck do you think it is, and says, rather breathless, “Yes!”

Raúl giggles into his ear, barely audible over the celebration—on TV they’re still showing interviews with the players, Pau Gasol is on right now and Alvaro couldn’t care less about him. “Hi, how are you? You still training?”

“ _Fuck_ , Chori!” Alvaro laughs. “Congratulations, you big ass!”

“Wait, you were watching the game?”

“Of course I was watching!”

“But, but I thought you were—hang on, I can’t really hear anything, _guys_ , please?”

The whooping and singing only grows louder, however, and Alvaro hears Raúl try and protest some more until his voice gets swallowed in the noise; Alvaro laughs and yells into the phone, “Call me later, you bastard, okay? I’ll just keep watching.”

On TV, a shirtless Ricky Rubio is juggling with a flip-flop, a bottle of shampoo and Raúl’s phone.

Alvaro types a text to Xabi saying, _you can call me Mrs. European Champion, bitch <3_.  



End file.
